1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electron emission display, and more particularly, to an electron emission display having a structure for applying voltage to an anode electrode for accelerating an electron beam.
2. Description of Related Art
In general, electron emission elements can be classified into those using hot cathodes as an electron emission source and those using cold cathodes as the electron emission source.
There are several types of cold cathode electron emission elements, including Field Emitter Array (FEA) elements, Surface Conduction Emitter (SCE) elements, Metal-Insulator-Metal (MIM) elements, and Metal-Insulator-Semiconductor (MIS) elements.
A conventional electron emission display includes an array of electron emission elements arranged on a first substrate and a light emission unit arranged on a second substrate. The light emission unit includes phosphor layers and an anode electrode. The electron emission display further includes electron emission regions arranged on the first substrate and driving electrodes arranged on the first substrate to control electron emission from the electron emission regions. The anode electrode arranged on the second substrate causes electrons emitted from the electron emission regions to be effectively accelerated toward the phosphor layers. Accordingly, the electrons emitted from the electron emission regions excite the phosphor layers to display an image.
The anode electrode receives a direct current voltage of, for example, hundreds to thousands of positive volts that can accelerate the electrons emitted from the first substrate to the second substrate. The voltage is applied from an input terminal. The input terminal extends from the anode electrode to an edge of the second substrate and has a portion arranged outside of a vacuum envelope (or chamber) formed by the first substrate and the second substrate.
Therefore, the second substrate must be provided with a portion on which the input terminal will be arranged. In the conventional electron emission display, one edge of the second substrate protrudes to provide the portion on which the input terminal will be arranged.
As described above, in order to apply the voltage to the anode electrode, the second substrate includes the protruding portion which extends past an opposite edge of the first substrate. Therefore, the protruding portion increases the overall size of the display. However, the protruding portion is a non-effective area in that an image is not displayed at the protruding portion, and therefore increases an amount of dead space.
The input terminal may be arranged on the first substrate in order to reduce the amount of dead space. However, when the input terminal is arranged on the first substrate, one or more extra holes must be formed on the first substrate to connect the input terminal with the anode electrode.